Summary

This edited volume presents an empirical account of how neoliberal ideas are adopted on the ground by different actors in different educational settings, from bilingual education in the US, to migrant work programmes in Italy, to minority language teaching in Mexico. It examines language and education as objects of neoliberalization and as powerful tools and sites through which ideological principles underpinning neoliberal societies and economies are (re)produced and maintained (and with that, inequality and exclusion). This book aims to produce a complex understanding of how neoliberal rationalities are articulated within locally anchored and historical regimes of knowledge on language, education and society.

Review:

A rich collection of empirical studies showing how important language education and language of education are as terrains for struggles around neoliberal governmentality, and illuminating debates about what neoliberalism is, how it works for individuals, groups, corporations and states, and where its contradictions lie.

- Monica Heller, University of Toronto, Canada

The wide-ranging, sharply observed, and detailed ethnographic studies in this smart volume demonstrate language education policies and practices designed to promote subjectivities and values working more to the advantage of global capitalism than to students. The volume also demonstrates the unevenness of such neoliberal language projects: their shortcuts, failures, broken promises – and actors’ points of resistance.

- Bonnie Urcuioli, Hamilton College, USA

This book opens up a ground-breaking space for understanding how neoliberalism has permeated education worldwide and consequently affects the way people make sense of, and invest in, language and multilingualism. It captures and engages readers in the complexities of the triple resignification of education, of language and of the self. Essential reading for all those troubled by present challenges.

- Luisa Martín Rojo, Autonomous University of Madrid, Spain

Author Biography:

Mi-Cha Flubacher works in the Department of Linguistics, University of Vienna, Austria. Her research interests include language and work, and language and migration/integration.

Alfonso Del Percio works in the UCL Institute of Education, University College London, UK. His research interests include language and work, and language and political economy.